Double posting suggestion

[Gilligan]

If the forums system already detect two posts within 60 seconds, why not add the ability to have it check for duplicate posting and cross-column duplicating? I see posts occasionally that say "double post - please remove" and then we all see the ones that have the same question posted across two or three different forums. I wonder how difficult it would be to have the threads checked for duplicates at post-time. This would probably help out the moderators as well. Just an idea.

 

[WayneH]

If it can't be done via software we need more people to report the threads. There is far too little reporting of cross-posting and duplicates, and since the OP can't do it the others need to. A majority of the ones I end up deleting are found by accident.

 

[shaft]

Well it would take an active script to queury the db to find the duplicate posts. It could be done but not easily and would be too time consuming for the admins here to write and test out especially with them working on 3.0 of the site.

What might be easier for them to impliment at some point is a delete post option by the original poster until a reply is posted. Then it would take an admin to stroll by and delete manually.

 

[bezking]

Well it would take an active script to queury the db to find the duplicate posts. It could be done but not easily and would be too time consuming for the admins here to write and test out especially with them working on 3.0 of the site.

What might be easier for them to impliment at some point is a delete post option by the original poster until a reply is posted. Then it would take an admin to stroll by and delete manually.

And besides that it would really hammer the server's resources (especially MySQL) so it would need to be run once a day in the off-hours (eg Use a CRONtab job to run it at like 12p every night.)

 

[shaft]

Yeah, that too. I guess it would be easier if people would only hit the post button once.

 

[Gilligan]

And besides that it would really hammer the server's resources (especially MySQL) so it would need to be run once a day in the off-hours (eg Use a CRONtab job to run it at like 12p every night.)

Not sure if I understand your reply but actually I was talking about it checking every post on the fly (as it does the timing between posts, etc).

 

[shaft]

Not sure if I understand your reply but actually I was talking about it checking every post on the fly (as it does the timing between posts, etc).

It would take up too many resources on the server to do this and not really feasable.

Basically, unless RR.com was on its on dedicated dual quad core Xenon processor server, the CPU would would be spiked at 99% most of the time to query the large database and cause the site to perform poorly.

 

[bezking]

Not sure if I understand your reply but actually I was talking about it checking every post on the fly (as it does the timing between posts, etc).

Sorry.. I had a geek impulse. Shaft is 100% on the money with his far less-technical explanation.

Yeah, that too. I guess it would be easier if people would only hit the post button once.

Yeah. That would definetly help.

 

[shaft]

I didnt want to get too technical, but I guess my explanation worked.

 

[Gilligan]

Originally, I was only intending for it to check the most recent posts, not the entire database. I had no intention of checking a double post today with a post from a year ago etc. I'm talking about double posting minutes or seconds apart. Or simply checking that particular user's recent posts. Then you're only checking a few versus thousands.

 

[bezking]

I suppose a script that said something to the tune of the following would work:

FIND ALL POSTS MADE WITHIN THE LAST HALF HOUR. FIND WHERE NAME OF POSTER IS SAME AND WHERE SUBJECT IS THE SAME. REMOVE ONE OF THEM.

But I now have no idea how to implement that. :roll:

 

[Gilligan]

I don't do this kind of programming, but from my C++ days, it shouldn't be more than a few lines of code in the Post function and would probably save moderators time in the long run.

 

[shaft]

I don't do this kind of programming, but from my C++ days, it shouldn't be more than a few lines of code in the Post function and would probably save moderators time in the long run.

A nifty lil perl script would work. But I think it would have more to do with resources than anything else.

 

[loumaag]

I am no vBulletin guru, but a few of things come to mind in this regard and should be factored into this thought process.

• Each individual post is unique and identified by a post number.
• Each user is unique and identified by a userID.
• A search of all posts by the most prolific poster (me) is returned in under 8 seconds which is unacceptable for this purpose.
• A search of posts in the last 24 hours by the most prolific poster (again me) is returned in 0.06 seconds, which is acceptable.
• A text comparison between the current pending post and all previous posts in the last 24 hours should take almost no time if written to fall out at the first non-equal character.
• The problem of duplicate posts are three-fold.
  1. The individual posts the same thing twice on purpose.
  2. The individual hits the "Submit Reply" more than once while the posting process is pending.
  3. There is a glitch in the software that occasionally (rarely) causes a post to appear multiple times.

I don't do this kind of programming, but from my C++ days, it shouldn't be more than a few lines of code in the Post function and would probably save moderators time in the long run.

The time saved would be nice; however, the vBulletin software gurus are the ones that should attack this problem, as I am sure it exists in all implementations and is not unique to RR.